The Daily News subscribers get full access to more than13
million names and addresses along with powerful search and download features.
Get the business leads you need with powerful searches of public records and notices.
Download listings into your spreadsheet or database.

Editorial Results (free)

In this week’s Real Estate Recap, a new development in the saga of Germantown’s Trader Joe’s, Memphis International Airport begins work on a new $35 million facility, and Central BBQ announces a new a location...

As Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s administration considers final details for a Fairgrounds redevelopment plan, he and his staff are waiting on a complete analysis of the condition of the Mid-South Coliseum.

The shorter, more compressed drive to a Fairgrounds redevelopment plan feels, at the outset, more certain and much less tentative than versions that surfaced during the administrations of previous mayors Willie Herenton and A C Wharton.

The 31st annual Africa in April Cultural Awareness Festival will take place Friday through Sunday, April 21-23, in Robert R. Church Park (Fourth and Beale streets). The festival will showcase the Republic of Togo from an international perspective, with music, food, a diverse cultural marketplace and more. Hours are 8 a.m. until late night; admission is $5. Visit the festival’s Facebook page for a complete schedule.

Hey Vols fans, Happy New Year. May your 2017 year in Tennessee sports be better than your 2016 year in Tennessee sports. Perhaps, a fresh start is what we all need. Let’s face it. The Music City Bowl wasn’t where Tennessee wanted the 2016 football season to end. The Vols were picked to win the SEC East Division in preseason and floundered to an 8-4 record in the regular season, 4-4 in the SEC. Their football season was about the norm for most UT sports in 2016: average. Here are some dates to mark in hope of better things ahead in 2017...

Haley Simmons has joined the Greater Memphis Chamber as the director of public policy, a new position in the chamber’s community development department. In this role, Simmons will be focused on enhancing the chamber’s advocacy efforts to inform and engage its members on important policy issues, and he’ll also be responsible for growing the chamber’s role in education initiatives.

Want to gaze into the future? Hop into Paul Young’s Infiniti and ride around Downtown for an hour. “These three blocks will be something of a spine for the neighborhood,” he says, as a light rain falls on the windshield. “We envision five- or six-story buildings with restaurants and retail at street level, commercial and residential up top.”

Paul Young gets a lot more attention these days than he did when he was the first director of the city-county Office of Sustainability. The attention comes with being the city director of Housing and Community Development where virtually all of the funding comes from the federal government.That federal funding has changed the face of public housing in the city in the last 25 years. There is only one large public housing project left in the city as a result of the federal funding and its use by Young’s predecessor, Robert Lipscomb.And what Lipscomb did with the job combined with being the executive director of the Memphis Housing Authority is why a lot of people want to get to know Paul Young these days.Our centerpiece story by Madeline Faber in Tuesday’s edition makes clear that Young has no desire to wield that kind of power. And it is unlikely anyone in the near future will have the kind of autonomy Lipscomb did.But beyond that there is still the flow of a lot of federal dollars and Young has some ideas based on his experience in government and finance prior to coming to HCD – everything in government is initials.It’s a much different experience than Lipscomb’s. Lipscomb coined the phrase “ending public housing as we know it” and at times that slogan wasn’t followed with a lot of detail about what came after public housing was demolished, especially with the first of the projects to fall.The last public housing project, Foote Homes, will be demolished on Young’s watch which makes his tenure important if more limited than Lipscomb’s tenure.

Quite the Easter weekend on the Overton Park Greensward.Greensward partisans planned a Saturday Easter Egg hunt, Memphis Zoo parking crews found the eggs and a crowd of several hundred people blocked overflow parking briefly that afternoon.

Every neighborhood in Memphis and Shelby County has the right to be free from the negative effects of vacant, abandoned and blighted properties. That’s the battle cry of the Memphis Blight Elimination Charter, a 23-page pledge that will steer policy and programs dedicated to blight eradication.

With multimillion-dollar investments growing up around it in the Crosstown and Uptown neighborhoods, the Klondike/Smokey City Community Development Corp. is working with the University of Memphis on a grassroots action plan to stave off gentrification.

Last Word is a new daily online column that offers an overview of what’s happened at the end of shift, so to speak. Picture a dimly lit newsroom in the Downtown night and the last person in the place leaving a memo for the morning shift and you have a pretty good idea of what we are aiming for.

On the last day of the Mid-South Fair Sunday, Oct. 4, several hundred people gathered at the Mid-South Fairgrounds to listen to live music, watch roller derby, buy souvenirs, cheer on a wrestling exhibition or two and, of course, eat.

It’s a set of events just about any incumbent would envy during a re-election bid.

Overnight riverboat cruises on the Mississippi River picked up just as Beale Street Landing opened in mid-2014. In late April, the long-dormant Pyramid reopened as a Bass Pro Shops megastore with a hotel and other attractions.

The Foote Homes public housing development is still standing with word Monday, Sept. 28, that the city of Memphis has secured a $30 million federal grant to convert it to a mixed-use, mixed-income development.

The Foote Homes public housing development is still standing with word Monday, Sept. 28, that the city of Memphis has secured a $30 million federal grant to convert it to a mixed-use, mixed-income development.

The Memphis City Council Tuesday, Sept. 15, approved the appointment of Laura Harris to the Memphis Housing Authority board. The item was added to the agenda to have Harris on the MHA board in time for a Wednesday, Sept. 16, meeting.

Even after numerous debates, including three on television, it turns out the four major candidates for Memphis mayor did have a few new things to say during the last televised debate of the 2015 election year.

The Memphis City Council Tuesday, Sept. 15, approved the appointment of Laura Harris to the Memphis Housing Authority board. The item was added to the agenda to have Harris on the MHA board in time for a Wednesday, Sept. 16, meeting.

Memphis City Council members gave final approval Tuesday, Sept. 15, to a freeze on the city’s deferred retirement program in an effort to bolster police ranks and keep the force from dropping below 2,000 officers.

Memphis City Council members gave final approval Tuesday, Sept. 15, to a freeze on the city’s deferred retirement program in an effort to bolster police ranks and keep the force from dropping below 2,000 officers.

Memphis City Hall was rocked this week with news that implicated one of its top officials in numerous sexual abuse allegations.

A single complaint, lodged last week by a Seattle resident against former city Housing and Community Development director Robert Lipscomb, snowballed to as many as eight other, similar allegations as of Thursday, Sept. 3.

Memphis City Hall was rocked this week with news that implicated one of its top officials in numerous sexual abuse allegations.

A single complaint, lodged last week by a Seattle resident against former city Housing and Community Development director Robert Lipscomb, snowballed to as many as eight other, similar allegations as of Thursday, Sept. 3.

The Memphis Police Department took seriously a 2010 complaint of sexual abuse against the city’s director of Housing and Community Development, city chief administrative officer Jack Sammons said Wednesday, Sept. 2, after reviewing five-year-old emails.

Shortly after Memphis Mayor A C Wharton ended a City Hall press conference Monday, Aug. 31, about a single allegation of sexual misconduct against Robert Lipscomb, Wharton and Memphis Police Department director Toney Armstrong began fielding calls from others who claimed sexual abuse by the ousted Housing and Community Development director.

Shortly after Memphis Mayor A C Wharton ended a City Hall press conference Monday, Aug. 31, about a single allegation of sexual misconduct against Robert Lipscomb, Wharton and Memphis Police Department director Toney Armstrong began fielding calls from others who claimed sexual abuse by the ousted Housing and Community Development director.

Less than 24 hours after word of his suspension following an allegation of sexual misconduct, city of Memphis Housing and Community Development director Robert Lipscomb resigned the post Monday, Aug. 31.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. confirmed Monday, Aug. 31, that allegations of sexual misconduct were made in a Seattle criminal complaint against city Housing and Community Development director Robert Lipscomb.

Robert Lipscomb, the city’s Housing and Community Development director, was relieved of duty Sunday, Aug. 30, by Memphis Mayor A C Wharton following a criminal complaint filed last week in Seattle, Washington alleging a past improper sexual relationship with a man who was a minor at the time.

It’s hard to imagine that a 65,000-seat stadium could be overlooked. Perhaps it’s because the Liberty Bowl wasn’t in the center of the Mid-South Fairgrounds when the stadium was built in 1965; it was on the eastern side of 155 acres of city-owned land, with a rail spur running along its eastern boundary.

A team of eight out-of-town planning experts has a busy week ahead as it wades into the simmering local debate about plans to recast the Mid-South Fairgrounds.

And the first hard copy of something the Urban Land Institute-assembled group is likely to get are the comments from four town hall meetings held in different parts of Memphis over two evenings last week.

With no debate or discussion, the Memphis City Council approved Tuesday, May 19, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr.’s proposal to buy the 13-story Donnelley J. Hill state office building at 170 N. Main St., just a stone’s throw from City Hall.

When the blonde left-fielder skidded across the outfield grass attempting in vain to catch a tricky hit, she likely didn’t know she was “visiting” – belly down – a well-fertilized, close-cropped living memorial to the man who spread love of Lipscomb from his jewelry store a couple hundred yards away.

It took about 25 years for an elevator ride to reach the top of The Pyramid.

That’s how long several generations of political leaders – three county mayors and three Memphis mayors as well as a changing group of city council members over seven elections – have been seeking a Pyramid with a ride to the apex.

Kroger Co., buoyed by the Crosstown Concourse development and increased investment in Midtown as a whole, has purchased properties associated with the long-dormant Washington Bottoms project at Poplar Avenue and Cleveland Street.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton takes an operating budget proposal of more than $622 million to the Memphis City Council Tuesday, April 21.

The proposed budget will be larger than the current fiscal year’s budget, reflecting Wharton’s belief that the city has enough of its fiscal crisis behind it at this point to slowly begin reinvesting in areas such as public safety and street paving.

With a HUD official in town last week bearing word of a $3 million job training grant for public housing residents, city leaders remained focused on what Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. calls “the big one.”

The national outlook for traditional enclosed malls is bleak. No new enclosed mall has been built in the U.S. since 2006. More than 24 have closed since 2010, and an additional 60 are teetering on the edge, according to data from Green Street Advisors. Around 15 percent of malls nationwide are expected to close in the next decade.

The group that wants to see the city renovate and reopen the Mid-South Coliseum is exploring something similar to the “previtalization” events of last year at the Tennessee Brewery.

“We’re not the only ones who want to do a previtalizing event in the Coliseum,” said Marvin Stockwell, of the Coliseum Coalition, on the WKNO TV program Behind The Headlines. “If an investor comes forward, great. If it doesn’t, we’ve given it a proper send off. You want to at least give citizens a chance to be in that space.”

For most of its 103-year life as city property, the Mid-South Fairgrounds has been a place where Memphians remember why they came there in the past, as local leaders have periodically pushed to remake its landscape and in turn create more memories going forward.

The owners of Southbrook Mall got $1.5 million in improvements from City Hall this week. But it wasn’t the $1.5 million the owners of the Whitehaven mall wanted in 2012, when the city contemplated giving them that sum to fix the roof and make repairs to the mall’s heating and air conditioning system.

Sweetie Pie’s, the St. Louis soul food institution in a standoff with its Beale Street landlord, has been approached by the administration of Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. as a tenant for one of two malls the administration wants to convert to “town centers.”

The most difficult secrets to keep at City Hall are those dealing with economic development – the clandestine discussions between city and business leaders and companies considering moving to or expanding in Memphis.

The upcoming review of the Fairgrounds redevelopment concept by a group of Urban Land Institute experts will move quickly and could be a political wild card.

The city’s request last week for a review by Urban Land Institute’s Advisory Services goes to a part of the planning and land use nonprofit that has been specializing in such political hot potatoes since 1948.

City Housing and Community Development Director Robert Lipscomb wants the Urban Land Institute to “review, evaluate and issue recommendations” on the Wharton administration’s Fairgrounds redevelopment plan after leading a set of public hearings and discussions that would take place over a five-day period.

Sweetie Pie’s, the St. Louis soul food institution in a standoff with its Beale Street landlord, has been approached by the administration of Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. as a tenant for one of two malls the administration wants to convert to “town centers.”

The idea that a declining shopping mall can be redeveloped and reinvigorated as a “town center” with local government offices as a catalyst for private developers appears to be on its way to a meeting with reality.

Sweetie Pie’s, the St. Louis soul food institution in a standoff with its Beale Street landlord, has been approached by the administration of Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. as a tenant for one of two malls the administration wants to convert to “town centers.”

The city of Memphis secured $6.7 million in federal funding last week to improve and rehab public housing.

Meanwhile, the city’s application for a much larger federal grant to demolish the city’s last large public housing development was making the rounds at the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. told the Memphis Rotary Club Tuesday, Feb. 10, that the ambitious recasting of the Mid-South Fairgrounds – a project that is solely a City Hall creation at this point -- is going to get a second look from outside consultants.

Nashville is a more turbulent place than usual these days, especially Capitol Hill. So Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. and his administration probably won’t tempt the turbulence there by taking their plan for a Tourism Development Zone to finance a Mid-South Fairgrounds renovation to the Tennessee Building Commission later this month.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. is willing to explore a renovation of the Mid-South Coliseum, but he doesn’t want to delay getting state approval for a Tourism Development Zone to finance an amateur sports tournament complex at the Mid-South Fairgrounds.

It’s not on the Monday, Jan. 26, agenda of the Shelby County Commission, but commissioners are watching the political dominoes that are lining up en route to some kind of move by the city of Memphis toward a Fairgrounds Tourism Development Zone.

Two weeks after they ignored a proposed $43.1 million settlement of the six-year old schools funding legal standoff, Memphis City Council members Tuesday, Jan. 20, approved a $41.8 million settlement with Shelby County Schools.

At 7.7 miles, it takes about 12 minutes to make the drive between the Mid-South Fairgrounds and Graceland.

However, the political fortunes of each couldn’t be more different.

A financing plan for a long-delayed expansion of the Graceland campus to develop all 120 acres owned by Elvis Presley Enterprises and amassed since the mid-1990s cleared the Shelby County Commission this week and the Memphis City Council a week before.

Elvis Presley Enterprises attempted to secure private financing of its plan for a 450-room resort hotel and a remake of its plaza area, but those attempts failed, said Graceland’s bond counsel, because it is difficult for borrowers to get conventional financing for a hotel project.

Shelby County Commissioners approved the Graceland economic impact plan Monday, Dec. 8, the last local hurdle for a plan that includes the construction of a 450-room hotel and a later phase transforming the Graceland Plaza area across Elvis Presley Boulevard from the Graceland mansion.

Randy Stepherson has been named 2014-2015 chairman-elect of the Tennessee Grocers & Convenience Store Association board of directors. Stepherson is president of Stepherson Inc., the family- and employee-owned parent company of Superlo Foods, which has five Memphis-area locations, and Stepherson’s.

It would be cheaper and more efficient for the city of Memphis to lease and then buy the vacant Donnelley J. Hill state office building across Main Street from Memphis City Hall than to continue leasing multiple properties spread across town, consultants and city officials told City Council members Tuesday.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr.’s administration would move the Memphis Police Department, information technology services and six city agencies renting offices on Union Avenue Extended into the Donnelley J. Hill office building if the city goes through with a plan to swap the office building with state government in exchange for parking spaces in the Peabody Place garage.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr.’s administration would move the Memphis Police Department, information technology services and six city agencies renting offices on Union Avenue Extended into the Donnelley J. Hill office building if the city goes through with a plan to swap the office building with state government in exchange for parking spaces in the Peabody Place garage.

As city Housing and Community Development Director Robert Lipscomb began talking in the gym of the Whitehaven Community Center last week, he could see the Pepper Tree Apartments on the other side of Graceland Drive.

The owners of the Raleigh Springs Mall had been talking with Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr.’s administration until late last year about the city’s desire to see a revitalized mall possibly with city government offices.

If the city is going to spend money on a renovation of the Southbrook Mall in Whitehaven, it should be part of a larger plan for Whitehaven and tie in to the aerotropolis concept.

That’s what city Housing and Community Development Director Robert Lipscomb said Tuesday, April 15, as he outlined a $6.5 million plan for turning the mall into a “town center” that includes some city government offices and private retail.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. warned Tuesday, April 15, that “half measures” in converting city employees to a defined contributions benefits plan would not restore the city’s financial health and resolve an unfunded pension liability of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The city of Memphis would move government offices into two shopping malls and the Soulsville Town Center under tentative “conceptual” plans Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. took Tuesday, Feb. 18, to the Memphis City Council.

Memphis City Council members heard Tuesday, Feb. 18, that the administration of Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. wants to move some city government offices into the Soulsville Town Center in South Memphis and is weighing whether to renovate or tear down and build anew on the site of the Southbrook Mall in Whitehaven.

The city of Memphis is making changes in its plans to finance two housing developments that are part of the broader Heritage Trail plan for redevelopment of the area south of FedExForum and into South Memphis.